By Nicole Plucinski

Lady Hawk’s head coach Kelly Starchok earned the title of Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference’s Coach of the Year Award for all her hard work the Fall 2016 season.
“I am very humbled and honored to have received the Coach of the Year award in the conference. Let me be completely honest, this award is a team award and it is about the intangibles that you each possess,” Starchok said, in a speech she delivered at an end-of-season banquet held at Ilio DiPaolo’s restaurant in Hamburg.
“Every single one of my players took a pre-season 10th place pick and wrote our own future…and to that I owe each member of this team a personal thank you.”

The women’s soccer team was predicted to be last in the conference, but surprised critics with a fifth-place finish.

The 2016 team received five honors from the AMCC this past season, the most in the program’s thirteen-year history in the AMCC league. The Lady Hawks were recognized and rewarded by the nine other league coaches who vote annually. ALong with Starchok who won Coach of the Year, Jennifer Colvin and Brooklynn Gormel were picked to the 1st Team All-Conference, Jenna Castricone was placed on the 2nd Team and Shannon Rogers took a spot on the 3rd Team.

Overall, this season has been a very exciting considering it has been the first winning season in 10 years for Hilbert Women’s Soccer. The Lady Hawks had a 7 game winning streak, with 6 clean sheets (shutouts). The women scored 27 goals, which is 8 more goals than last year. Lastly, they set a new AMCC mark with a record of 9-7-1, establishing the program’s best winning percentage in the AMCC league at 4-4-1 with a 5th place finish for the program’s third postseason tourney.